


but we'll live a long life

by meios



Series: deneb ryder // 700 club [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Deneb has a drinking problem, Fluff, Futures, It's how he copes, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 07:25:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10680522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meios/pseuds/meios
Summary: "so," gil begins, "have you picked a planet yet?"





	but we'll live a long life

“So,” Gil begins, walking up and bumping hips when he matches Ryder’s stance, leaning heavily against the railing above the docking bay. Below, crowds dither about, not small enough to be ants and yet not big enough to truly be people—like a beehive, interweaving through honeycomb so as to feed the queen: feeding and fucking and dying. He scratches at his facial hair, gloveless today, all civvies like a real boy. “You picked a planet yet?”

 

Ryder looks at him, cigarette dangling loosely from in between two fingers. When he speaks, the acrid scent of tar accompanies his words. He looks a bit of a mess, if Gil is honest, like he’s just come away from a bender of sorts. The telltale glint of the dog tags around Ryder’s neck says enough: they’re rarely visible unless the man’s been playing with them, chain-smoking and binge drinking his way through tumultuous emotions, heavy chests and homesickness. There’s five o’ clock shadow dusting his sharp jaw, dark circles around small eyes. The sides of his head need to be clipped again, and maybe a shower is in order, too. Gil can’t really tell, doesn’t really want to, just reaches over to rest a hand at the small of his boy’s back.

 

Ryder leans into it.

 

“To go to next or?” he answers softly, gruffly. Gil watches the tattoo next to Ryder’s ear move as he speaks, leans over to press a kiss to it simply because he can. The Nexus can watch if they so choose, for he is making the most of this.

 

“To live on. After all this.”

 

“Oh,” is all Ryder says at first, and then he’s looking away, gaze going somewhere far, perhaps somewhere like Earth, back to a childhood on the Citadel perhaps, to being quiet and gay, surrounded by another’s accomplishments, too good with guns and poetry and pretty things and smiling like a diplomat, feeling too much and understanding that perhaps the good inside people is a fake good, but a good all the same. (Five years younger. Ryder’s five years younger, but the man carries himself like an ancient with easy quips and compassion befitting the Pope.)

 

“Was just wondering, s’all,” Gil continues. His hand’s slipped beneath Ryder’s shirt now, skin on skin for the touch-starved boy.

 

Ryder doesn’t respond right away. He bites on a full lower lip with crooked teeth, rubs at the thick scars dotting his forearms, reaches out as if to hold onto Gil. Faltering, he runs a hand through his hair, drops his cigarette and stamps on it with the toe of his boot. “I like space,” he says, small. “It’s... all I can see right now. One day, yeah, we’ll find solid ground, but I—In space, I have you. I have Vega. I have everyone.”

 

Gil presses another kiss to Ryder’s cheek, sweet as sugarcane, closes his eyes and smiles. “Y’see, the right answer was, ‘I’ll build you a house on every planet, babe,’ ’cause then I could’ve just swooned like a girl outta the classics, but you _had_ to ruin the joke.”

 

Ryder snorts, finally looks back at Gil with twinkling eyes, deep and dark and full of galaxies of their own. (Once, Gil swore that he had gotten lost in them, charting new constellations with the stories the two of them would write together.) “I’ll build you a house on every planet, babe,” he whispers, smiles.

 

Gil swoons, far too theatrical, laughing all the while.

 

The kiss Ryder plants on him is smoke, incorporeal but tangible all the same. Like ozone and darkness, stars burning out.

**Author's Note:**

> (Vega is Deneb's twin. She's pretty great.)


End file.
